Young Writers Society

Indecisive Fate

Chapter 3, The End is Far

Dan was confused as to what had just happened. That could’ve become a fight very quickly but Ivan had stopped it in its tracks. As the crowd dispersed, Dan saw Nathan standing there with his head hanging in shame. Dan rushed over and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, you ok?” Dan asked.

Nathan raised his with a vacant expression on his face.

“I’m fine, just little angry I guess.” Nathan replied as he walked off to class.

Dan followed after him since he had the same classes with him just about every period.

The rest of school was just Dan and Nathan getting through classes ASAP while looking like they were paying attention. Nothing was really learned just a bunch of review for tests. Dan had handed the papers into the sports group and he got accepted, but it didn’t feel like a victory. Dan had been scared out of his wits and he just felt all around disturbed by Ivan’s sudden outburst. I mean, ice cold trickster Ivan exploded like an atomic bomb. Besides, he had other things on his mind. Dan was thinking of a way to cheer Nathan up when Lucy came up from behind and tapped him the shoulder.

“Hey, are you uh, coming?” Lucy asked uncomfortable about asking Dan to enter the lions’ den again.

Dan remembered what Ivan had said earlier and nodded to Lucy who only returned a pitiful look.

Dan began the lonely walk home. He was thinking about whether or not he to go at all but he kept thinking about how angry Ivan would be. Something he didn’t want to see again. Ever. So he manned up and made his to the tower. When he got there it was relatively quiet, if not for sound of...music? It sounded like an orchestra was locked inside the tower itself.

Dan ran up to the double door-curious as to what was causing the symphony- and pushed them open to find that there was only Ivan in there, standing still before the towering mass of metallic devices. Dan looked around for anybody to be playing the instruments but found no one. ‘Oh come on.’ Dan thought as he looked up to see all of those strange instruments were attached INTO the towers mechanisms! He was astonished at how much stuff could fit onto one tower. Granted it was a very, very big tower. Ivan turned around and faced Dan.

“What do you think?” Ivan asked, with his arm stretched to the ceiling.

“It’s…awesome.” Dan murmured in awe as looked at all of the instruments as they played their parts flawlessly.

Ivan smiled and then proceeded to walk over to a panel on the base of the mechanisms and flipped some of the switches. The music quickly died in response. Dan looked over at the prodigious teen who was grinning from ear to ear.

“You made all of this?” Dan inquired incredulously.

“Yep, and it’s not even complete.” Ivan chuckled as walked over to a table and began writing. Dan was awestruck at Ivan’s constant thought process.

As Dan was soaking this in he didn’t notice that Nathan had crashed through the door yelling his name while being chased by Lucy.

“Dan are you OK?” Nathan practically shouted at him as he ran over to Dan with Lucy hot on his heels.

“Would you cool it already?” Lucy yelled at Nathan but he ignored her as tried to pull Dan out the door.

“Come on we could get spotted.” Nathan pleaded in a low voice as pulled on Dan’s arm.

“You’re a little slow on the upkeep aren’t you Nathan?” Ivan jeered.

Nathan froze as he realized how much of an idiot he must look like.

“Um, right, sorry.” Nathan said as he let go of Dan’s arm. “Wait, why aren’t you telling us to get out?” Nathan asked fearfully.

Lucy and Dan looked at Ivan as realized that he hadn’t asked them to leave from disrupting his conversation, of which Ivan considers very rude.

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“I wasn’t that bad.” Ivan protested to the young writer.

“So says you. Others say you nearly took someone’s head off with a ‘hatchet’ I believe.” The boy countered.

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“Because I planned for you to come in here and ‘try’ to save your friend.” Ivan stated in a uncaring tone. Lucy gave Ivan a murderous scowl.

“Ivan, you better not have anything planned that might end up hurting them…badly.” Lucy scolded with a stern tone.

Ivan gained an expression of mock hurt. “Me, hurt the audience? Never!”

Dan and Nathan were confused. “Audience?” they said in unison.

Ivan’s face changed from mock hurt to his trademark creepy smile.

“Yes, audience, for you shall be the first of many to witness a wonder I have discovered!” Ivan said with a pure jubilance as stretched his arms out.

This earned him a even more confused look from all but Lucy.

“Ivan! I told you to drop that!” Lucy shouted her face a furious mess.

“Oh dear sister,” Ivan totted while shaking his head. “I could never let it go, you know this.”

Lucy was about ready to yank his ear off, when Ivan suddenly yelled his grand discovery.

“I have discovered where dreams go!” Ivan declared with a grin on his face.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Okay, stop. You said that?” The boy asked incredulously.

Ivan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, yeah, but I was a different person then. I wanted to make people gape in awe at what I said.” Ivan said sheepishly, with a shrug. “I was egotistical that way.”

The boy sighed with exasperation. “Okay. So what happened next?”

Ivan looked to the ground in shame. “My greatest achievement…and my worst mistake.” Ivan replied sullenly.

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Lucy’s jaw dropped in disbelief that her brother had basically said ‘Take me to the asylum now please.’ But Dan and Nathan actually believed him a bit. He was after all smart enough to repair this clock tower, maybe he can figure out something like where dreams go. Besides he’s speaking philosophically right?

Ivan’s face suddenly twisted in agony as he began coughing loudly. Ivan was hacking his heart out and there was clearly blood on his hand that covered his mouth. Lucy’s anger disappeared as her older brother fell on his knees coughing up storm.

“Ivan!” she yelled as she ran to his side.

“I’m-I’m fine. Really.” he managed to wheeze in between coughs.

“No you’re not, did you take your medicine?” Lucy demanded, a bit of anger returning to her words.

“Irrelevant. This was more important.” He stated plainly as he stood.

He coughed a couple more times into his hand then stood facing Dan and Nathan who were very distressed.

“I’m sorry about that,” Ivan started “my health isn’t at its greatest unfortunately. But that is neither here nor now.” Ivan said, as if the last few seconds didn’t happen. “Any whom, as I was saying, I have found out where dreams go to die.” Ivan persisted.“Though you’d think it would obvious with how much we let go of our dreams over the years of life.”

Nathan stepped forward a few steps. “What do you mean obvious?” Nathan growled at Ivan.

“I mean that if they are created somewhere else than our world then they have to come here in order to retire.” Ivan replied.

“Our world doesn’t have the capacity to hold all of our dreams, so they’re created and exist elsewhere in the universe by our minds. Once created we play with them, enjoy them, and eventually, forget them.” Ivan monologued but before any more questions could be asked he continued on.

“Once we forget them however, they die. But not before seeing our world in the form of falling stars. While falling stars are meteors yes, they also carry the dream with them. I will not explain how it works, it is very long process. As a result when they touch our planet, boom, gone.”

No one in the room knew how to react to such a bizarre theory. They wanted to say that he was crazy but they were too stunned to do so.

“Think of me as you will, but I have tested this theory.” Ivan sneered scornfully as he walked towards the door and pulled them open.

Ivan then stepped outside and they all noticed that it was dark out. Ivan began walking outside, towards the forest that surrounded the tower. At that moment everyone broke out of their stupor and ran towards him as he took a turn to the right, into the denser area of the woods. They followed after him, as they were thinking of how to tell him how crazy this sounded. Before they could say anything, Ivan abruptly stopped and turned to face them.

“Would you kindly stop following me?” he asked in a bitter tone.

They all stopped walking and watched Ivan walk away.

After a minute or so Dan groaned sarcastically, “Well that could’ve gone better.”

“We have to stop him.” Lucy said determinedly. “He’ll go to the ends of the Earth to prove himself right.”

Nathan sighed as he turned to Lucy. “Well what do you suggest we do? Go up to him and say ‘you’re a nut case’ and be done with it?” Nathan suggested in a disgruntled tone.

“I don’t know, but we have to stop him before something bad happens.” Lucy retorted, equally annoyed.

“Come on what’s the worst that could happen?” Dan asked.

Lucy turned to face him. “Remember that forest fire that happened in the middle of winter…during a blizzard?” Lucy shot back.

Dan did remember, and so did everyone else in the country, a freak accident that caused a forest fire that lasted for a whole hour.

Dan’s eyes grew wide.“We have to stop him!” Dan yelled as he ran after where Ivan had gone.

Lucy and Nathan followed suit. They ran towards where they thought he was going but Ivan had made a turn that would throw them off and would lead to the next disaster caused by the driven clock tower keeper.

Ivan had walked right to the spot he had first seen a shooting star when he was very young and still had his whole family. It had fascinated him all those years ago but now he would find out if there was hope for the plan that he had meticulously constructed based on this one event. If this went wrong he didn’t know what he would do…

“No… it will work. There is no way it can’t.” Ivan declared to the heavens as he waited for a star to fall.

It would be none other a special kind that not even could have foreseen, one that carries the hopes and desires of any all who see it. Ivan was fortunate enough for his plan to work this far but from here it was about whether or not he had the strongest desire. Unfortunately he wasn’t.

Lucy realized her mistake and stopped. It was like some sort of premonition. Like when you think someone is watching you.

“WAIT! We took a wrong turn!” Lucy shouted to her companions.

Lucy turned towards where her brother was and started running towards him. Again,she just felt like it was the way.

“This way!” Lucy shouted to her friends.

She didn’t wait for them she had to stop her brother before he did something rash. Lucy was approaching him fast and noisily, which made Ivan turn towards her approach. Ivan went wide-eyed as saw the one person who could ruin his plans. One of the few people he loved.

“Lucy NO!” He shouted, in a feeble attempt to stop her. At that precise moment the very thing he had been waiting for appeared in the sky, shining brighter than the moon and all of the stars together. Everyone at that very place saw the grand light that was high above their heads. Ivan, Lucy, Nathan, And Dan all stood still staring at the shining ball of hopes and dreams. Ivan knew that the star wasn’t drawn to him, he felt it. It was drawn to Lucy, the one person he had tried to keep from all of this. He had to figure out how to stop it before it honed in on her. It would do one of two things; grant all of your hearts desires, or un-make you from this very world. Then Nathan, Dan, Ivan, and Lucy heard their greatest wishes whispered into their ears. Every want and desire the star could grant was spoken into their very souls. It mesmerized them into a statue like state.

Ivan was quickly becoming annoyed with this distraction. Ivan saw that in his stupor, the star had hurtled itself towards Lucy. Ivan had almost no time to think…so he didn’t. For the first time in 4 years Ivan had let his emotions dictate his actions. He threw himself in front of Lucy and stood between her and the star. When the star collided with Ivan, a mass of pure shapeless desire burst throughout their world, causing a massive momentary power outage. Raw, pure, desire can be volatile when the wrong person has it, but it takes equally pure desire of person in order to counter act it.

But not all of it could be contained, for there were six who would have their wildest dreams become true and many others who would be connected in an intricate web of chance and choice. They would have to step up to make things right, for what began at that moment is far from ending for the beginning has yet to even take shape. It shall be these four and two others who will undo reality at its seams, and be forced to fix the damage caused by others actions.

The Game has yet to begin,

But only these six shall come out,

Standing strong and ready to undo,

What has yet to truly begin.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Why are you writing that?” Ivan asked as he looked over the boy’s shoulder.

The boy slammed the book shut and said one word, “Suspense.”

Ivan nodded and sat back down.

“Ivan, I have already said I would do as I promised, but you have to have faith in my skills.” The boy said, as he opened the book. “Besides, who would read this if it wasn’t interesting?”

Ivan sighed. “Fine, so I-”

“Ah, Ivan, I already have the details from the others, I’ll only ask you to corroborate from now on.” The boy said as wrote down the story from another’s perspective.

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Author’s note: …I HATE this chapter! I’m sorry but this chapter was like a dagger that just wouldn’t come out! One of the main plot devices is introduced and I really think I took a massive risk with it. It gets better, trust me. It’s just…one of those chapters that you hate yourself for writing…Oh why cruel mind of mine did you fail to create a better plot device?

Hate me all you want…I won’t blame you…but please understand that I had very little experience writing big projects like this one when I wrote this chapter. Just give it time, it gets much, much better.

-Sincerely TheMadWriter.